"It's basically chat with avatars - entirely social." 1. Yeah, but WoW is basically MUD with graphics. 2. Yeah, and entirely social apps never take off, do they? Like email, or SMS, or MySpace... The thing about Second Life that makes it special is the extent to which it allows its users to build within it: not just the creation of objects, but the coding of behaviour into those objects, to the point where you can entirely new social tools and experiences using the system as a platform. I haven't seen WoW do that. I'm not saying that SL really will beat WoW, but you are *seriously* underestimating its potential.

You're conflating two different arguments here. Mike is not arguing anything about ownership, purely about the factors that drive him to contribute. As Stewart said, you have to leave behind the fact that Kevin Rose was basically talking drivel. People contribute to Digg without any expectations of love, ownership or democracy. It's about the various kinds of satisfaction gained from taking part. Ownership doesn't have to be a factor here; sure, it can help, but I'm pretty sure that the Digg userbase is under no illusions about who owns what, irrelevant of Rose's wistful hyperbole. Despite this, they are still there. While I'm definitely in favour of people being owners of the work they contribute, I don't think it puts Digg in a position of being exploitative capitalists. Spending half an hour on Digg every day to post links and spout opinions is not comparable to an eight-hour shift at the plant to feed your family; for one thing, it's risk-free and almost frictionless to pick up and move to a different site. Link aggregation is not exactly a rare commodity. If anything, the site owners are more in need of their community than the other way around - this is why Calacanis made his pitch in the first place. It's not about a just reward, it's about desperation.